ReVisioning: Critical Methods of Seeing Christianity in the History of Art eds. James Romaine and Linda Stratford.

Koestle-Cate, Jonathan

ReVisioning: Critical Methods of Seeing Christianity in the History of Art eds. James Romaine and Linda Stratford

Eugene, Oregon: Cascade Books, 2013

ISBN 978 1620320846, 356pp, p/b, 25 [pounds sterling]

The Spiritual Dynamic in Modern Art Charlene Spretnak

New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2014

ISBN 978 1137350039, 251pp, h/b, 62.50 [pounds sterling]

A fascinating digression within histories of art is the focus on the methodologies that guide, govern and inform the discipline. In recent times few have pursued this line of enquiry more sedulously that James Elkins, whose Stories of Art in particular investigates how histories of art are weighted and presented pedagogically within different cultures. Both books under review begin by citing his prior work, either as a precedent for highlighting the lack of serious attention paid to the religious or spiritual aspects of contemporary art, or for his metahistorical insight into art historical bias. Both make a comparable and substantial claim: to ignore either the spiritual or theological motivations for art diminishes our understanding of that art. The Spiritual Dynamic in Modern Art opens by arguing that 'one cannot fully grasp the complexity and depth of modern and contemporary art if the spiritual dimension is ignored, denied, downplayed, or dismissed' (p.2). Spretnak's study is, in essence, a reassessment of what she calls the 'compromised historiography' of artists like Mondrian, who are habitually purged of all suspect spiritual affiliations or motivations.

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In a similar vein, the authors of ReVisioning apply critical methods to a review of the place of Christianity within the history of art. ReVisioning takes an art historical view that directly aligns the history of Christianity with the history of art, claiming that the latter 'cannot be accurately written without an acknowledgement of Christianity and liturgical theology, nor can the history of "the church at worship" be written without addressing the visual arts' (p.22). Here the lines of communication between the languages of art and church, so habitually closed down by either side, are reopened and shown to be indispensable to both. In part this demands a form of address that applies to theology as visual critique; in part an acknowledgement that a theologically-informed eye is an essential guide to visual exegesis. In essence, the book's key premise is that there is no such thing as theologically-neutral art, nor theologically-neutral scholarship of art. Furthermore, it convincingly argues that the history of art is impoverished without a concomitant understanding and application of theology. For example, in questions of periodization the argument is made by several contributors that ignorance of a period's theology is 'one of art history's biggest impediments to understanding that period's art' (p.221-2). The main threads throughout are 'visual theology' and 'religious visual culture' with a focus on the importance of methodological sensitivity and theological relevance, working on the basis that the history of the visual arts and Christianity is at once aesthetic and theological. In some respects it touches upon the kind of material religion associated with the work of Sally Promey or David Morgan, but with a greater emphasis on the methodological strategies used to understand it. By addressing the question of how to critically engage with art's Christian themes and motifs in a rigorously scholarly way, it also seeks to expose the secularist prejudices all too often applied to art.

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Perhaps Chloe Reddaway's contribution best encapsulates the aims of the book. Through an in-depth discussion of the interpretative strategies of reading hermeneutic space by scholars of Florentine art, she outlines a rich store of interpretative possibilities and methodological frameworks, notably 'a theologically-founded methodology of critical-devotional reading' as a means to consider 'the capacity of Christian images to act as theological media' (p.155). Other essays take a similarly synoptic or forensic approach to their particular field of art historical research, covering a wide diversity of topics from early Christian images to the religious relevance of technology in the contemporary work of artists like Paul Pfeiffer. Throughout, the level of investigative scholarship is impressive, as is the rigour and variety of its contributions. The only major disappointment is the lack of colour plates, promised in the text but printed in black and white.

Although the spiritual dynamic in modern art is hardly unexplored territory, what is refreshing about Spretnak's survey is its scope. She attempts to unearth overt and latent elements of the spiritual in the work of over 300 artists and movements covering more than 200 years, presented in a chronological series of mini-biographies that extend well beyond the usual suspects. In each case, Spretnak judiciously relies upon the artist's own testimony in deciding the extent to which a spiritual or religious dynamic is important to them, having no wish to infer a spiritual sensibility not already admitted by the artist themselves. Her premise is that throughout the history of modern art a path of spiritual perception and exploration has been as important to artists as more formal, social and political concerns, although 'it has long been misunderstood, suppressed, or overlooked' (p.201). Like 'a vast underground river' the fascination of modern artists for the spiritual has been buried beneath a 'cement culvert' installed by art historical narratives zealously guarding secular interpretations of their work (p.11). Like Elkins, she picks up on the common 'wisdom' that serious contemporary art has no place for the 'sentimentality' of the spiritual, as if spiritual accents in an artist's work will blight it as unserious. Her book is very much an attempt to redress the long-standing bias against that spiritual dynamic, still evident today in histories, theories and reviews of art. Indeed, as she discovered through the process of her research, it is evident not only in the discourses of art but interestingly at the concrete level of search terms and subject headings used by databases and digital archives.

On the thorny question of a definition of the spiritual Spretnak offers a few nuggets familiar to a dominant thread of spiritual understanding but one that does little to expand the spiri tual beyond a sense of the numinous. She also argues that one main spiritual orientation generally dominated the Zeitgeist in any one period, thereby taking an 'epistemic' approach to historical contextualising frequently challenged today by more 'discursive' historicism. Nevertheless, her approach helpfully serves to structure the argument into four main threads of spiritual inquiry--the Abrahamic, the Esoteric, the Allusive, and the Immanent which, as she readily shows, often overlap, discounting any strict adherence to a single thread of spirituality at any one time.

The book includes a helpful appendix of key resources on this theme, unearthing some hitherto unknown gems for this reviewer, yet puzzlingly omitting one or two well-known, undoubtedly seminal, texts from Australia and elsewhere, reflecting perhaps the Euro-American bias of her study. But its chief weakness is that in attempting so comprehensive a survey many of the individual entries are disappointingly brief.

Jonathan Koestle-Cate is an Associate Lecturer at Goldsmiths College, London and on the editorial board of A&C